When people attend major sporting events, festivals, or other such events, they frequently like to have souvenirs by which to remember the event. Photographs are especially desirable souvenirs, since they are personalized to the individuals and the specific experiences and events of the day. However, the expense and inconvenience of taking a camera to such an event often cause people not to take photographs at such events. Consequently, some venders use cameras to take instant photographs which they sell to the attendees. Other, commercial souvenirs, such as tee-shirts, mugs, or other collectibles, are also popular, though they typically lack the personalized touch that photographs can provide.
Presently, it is possible to create the popular kinds of souvenirs, such as tee-shirts and mugs, that have a picture on them generated from a digital image. However, the equipment needed to produce such souvenirs is much more bulky and expensive than a mere camera suitable for making instant photographs. If there were a convenient and effective way to take pictures of people at such events, and then place them mugs, tee-shirts, etc., it would provide a souvenir combining the desirable features of each. In order to do this, a way to store the pictures for application to the souvenir items is needed, along with a way for the attendees to view the pictures that were taken of them (or their friends or family), and select which ones they would most like to have applied to the souvenir items.
Such major gatherings are also a popular place to advertise. In particular, coupons are frequently distributed, for example in the form of flyers. Because such coupon offers can be selected with demographic information about the likely attendees, they can be better tailored to appeal to the prospective consumer than is possible with some other types of coupon distributions, such as advertisements in periodicals such as newspapers or magazines. Because they are being distributed locally, it is also somewhat easier for prospective sponsors to tailor their offers to the area in which a prospective consumer is likely to be influenced to take advantage of the offer. By comparison, if a sponsor pays to place an add in a newspaper, depending on the nature of their business, it is likely that they will be paying for circulation to a substantial number of people who will not seriously consider taking advantage of the coupon offer because they live too far from the sponsor""s establishment.
However, typical existing local distribution methods have offsetting shortcomings, as well. If the coupons are simply set out in flyers, they are much less likely to actually be picked up and read by a given attendee. On the other hand, if they are being manually distributed, the cost per coupon distributed is greatly increased. Furthermore, while such local distributions provide the sponsor with greater information about the time and location at which the coupon offers will be distributed, the actual coupons must still be generated in advance. Especially for larger events, which are otherwise the most desirable events at which to use local coupon distribution, the time information may be limited to certain days, rather than certain times of the day. Likewise, if the event is large enough that an attendee cannot conveniently walk from one end of the site to the other, the location information may not be specific enough to assure the optimum chance to influence the prospective consumer""s behavior. Consequently, even with local couponing methods, unnecessary expense is typically incurred due to the need to produce more coupons than will actually be distributed.
Therefore what is needed is a way to take digital photographs of attendees at sporting or other events, and for the attendees to view those pictures and select from them which ones they would like to have applied to souvenir items, and simultaneously to distribute coupons having offers that are selected to be likely to appeal to the attendees of a particular event. The present invention is directed towards meeting this need, amongst others.
A first embodiment system according to the present invention comprises: a harness; a digital camera affixed to the harness; a computer control unit affixed to the harness; a wireless data exchange component affixed to the harness; a printer affixed to the harness; and a battery affixed to the harness. The computer control unit begins a process of printing a coupon associated with a digital photograph before the digital photograph has been completely downloaded from the digital camera.